


How the French Saved the Multiverse

by Some Loxanian Historian (CapricciotheSpoon)



Series: Misadventures of Irvin and Paxter [1]
Category: Loxanian Ramblings
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:16:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22398442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CapricciotheSpoon/pseuds/Some%20Loxanian%20Historian
Series: Misadventures of Irvin and Paxter [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612075





	How the French Saved the Multiverse

How the French Saved the Multiverse

Pierre-Marguerite and Jean-Claude Proveaux are brothers. They were nearly 100 years old at the time but looked only 32, a feat usually impossible by human standards but nothing special to the likes of the Imaginaries, their species. Most people, when told of their age, would give them an awkward stare and back away slowly. At this point, they were used to it, but it still saddened their hearts every time. Nearly seventy years prior their youngest brother, Elliot, ran away to see the world in the body of a steam-automaton. He promised he would return, but their creator, Laurence Proveaux, had died by then. Thirty years ago they set off to find him; thirty years still they came back empty-handed.  
They had finally picked up a lead that their brother was spotted in Kasnual, Loxania on the planet Tari. Tari is a wonderful place, three times larger than Earth, seven sentient species inhabiting it, and vast continents full of everything from deserts to tundra to rainforests. Lox is the main continent on the planet housing the large and mountainous northern country of Loxania. Loxania is to Tari as the United States of America are to Earth. Kasnual is a province southeast of the capital of Feylin where Queen Ana-Lox Enokin and her daughters lived. While a bit difficult to reach since it was in a different dimension, they luckily owned a house there and teleportation between worlds is provided when you purchase certain models of homes in that subdivision. As traveling between dimensions was rather disorienting, the brothers planned to stay in Loxania for a while. After hopefully finding their brother, they would return to France resuming their once-peaceful life again. The teleport-ring exited in their living room where tranquil sunlight shone through dusty windows. It looked like nobody had been there for a long time. The peaceful silence was nearly instantly interrupted by the hiss of steam-powered pistons coming from the kitchen.  
“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Pierre. “Do you think it could be him?”  
A dull and lifeless face peered out from behind the corner. It certainly was not their brother.  
“Pierre-Marguerite and Jean-Claude Proveaux, I presume.”  
Despite how harsh the robot’s face looked they spoke very clearly but with a thick Classical Renari accent, even sounding somewhat paternal.  
“I am Parzhusa, Reni God of Knowledge. I have chosen this form to best suit my current task on this planet. Come, follow.”  
It, no, ‘he’, led them into the backyard. The Proveaux’s house was on a grassy hill overlooking the vast Kasnual valley, and if you looked hard enough you could see the great Feylin Mountains to the northwest.  
“I realize you have just crossed dimensions so another teleport might, as you say, scramble your atoms. I am willing to take those chances, though. Epinare, ipuna ithtou Dzareara Parzhusaria.”  
With that, they were off. Transportation by divine power is a lot smoother than their technological method, so they emerged feeling even better than they had left. While they had hardly spent half an afternoon in their Kasnual home, they hadn’t been to Ren in over thirty years and it was nice to see the beautiful scenery again. Ren is a fascinating country with large rainforests and vast rivers snaking through it. Dzareara Parzhusa is a city grown hundreds of thousands of years ago out of the trees of the rainforest by an ancient race of technologically advanced people. Their teleportation led them to a platform of woven trees branching off of the bustling center of the city full of shops, apartments, and restaurants, all grown out of trees.  
“Ça me soule!! Ohhh ça me soule! Our brother’s in Loxania, we’re in Ren, he’s probably far away from Kasnual by now, what are we ever going to do?”, lamented Pierre.  
Claude took Pierre’s shoulders in his hands and began to speak softly.  
“Come on, Marguerite. Calmez-vous, mon petit chou.”  
This deeply angered Pierre. Not only was he being addressed by his second name, but his brother was also humiliating him in front of a literal god by calling him a child. He slapped him in the face very hard.  
“Tais-toi et laisse-moi tranquille, ‘Jean’!”  
Claude teased his brother a lot, never too harshly, but he realized he had crossed the line there. Parzhusa, not understanding French but understanding the dynamics of the situation decided now would be a good time to get on with the purpose of bringing them here.  
“I have been sent here to quicken or prevent the coming apocalypse. Whether you like it or not, you are also a part of it. This I have foreseen for 50,000 years.”  
“That’s a long time to predict the end of the cosmos you know, have you ever told anyone?” asked Claude.  
“I was not the one to create this prophecy, dear Claude. This is known by all the deities of Tari. It is the day when the dead return and all will face the might of the death-goddess Lica!”  
“Seems like a GRAVE situation, don’t you think?”  
“Now is not the time for jokes! This is dreadfully serious! The fate of the universe, perhaps even the multiverse, rest in our hands!”  
“Looks like the dead have a bone to pick with you, Parzhusa,” Claude stated.  
Parzhusa rolled his mechanical eyes, a feat considered steam-automatons of this model are hardly even built to be able to have basic motor skills let alone roll their eyes, and left to go talk to the “far more likely to understand the gravity of this situation” Pierre.  
“The zombies seem to be very dead-icated.”  
“Moshideshidusha! Thedzarna, demthardanae!”  
Pierre remained silent, trying hard to not burst out laughing even with the seriousness of the situation at hand.

Two weeks later, after doing quite a lot of research on preventing the apocalypse and on myths of the undead, they had reached some kind of conclusion. They needed to wait until the first zombies awoke, take a sample of the pathogen, and create some kind of cure or vaccine. Unfortunately, this meant that one of them was going to have to get close to the zombies. Parzhusa, being both a robot and a god, was immune to the virus but as he said, “This is a situation that needs to be handled by the people of this world, not an immortal deity. It is destined that if I were to help, the consequences could be catastrophic. The prophecy states that it needs to be one of you two.”  
Pierre glanced nervously at Claude. “I really don’t want to test my immortality soon, Claude. Perhaps you could get the sample; you always brag about how brave you are in times of crisis.”  
“Nah, you always say you wish there was a little more action and excitement in your life, live it up a little! Profiter de la vie plus, Pierre!”  
Pierre sighed, “I guess you’re right, but let’s put off making any big decisions until the moment.”

Only three days had passed until the first zombies had awoken. Since the Reni burial process involves the family planting a tree over the grave, the first sign of zombies was uprooted trees. The second sign was, of course, the smell. The third sign was the strange sounds at night. Luckily, there were no signs of hostility, yet. They had developed a sort of gas bomb prototype to spread the cure, now all they needed to do was develop the said cure. Affected corpses had been gathered by the Reni government and quarantined in hollow tree-prisons, a common form of solitary confinement in Reni prisons.  
Reanimated corpses not yet captured seemed to avoid light and dry areas instead gathering in places damp and dark such as at the bottoms of pools of water and in the shade of the deepest rainforest trees. The three allies knew they had to act fast and so Pierre volunteered to risk his life to get the sample. He figured, if he was clumsy enough to get infected, they could knock him out until they had the cure and then save him. Now was the hard part, finding the zombies.  
While there were enough zombies to have the government take action, they were still few and far between. The Reni president, Alezhia Roinseldane, had issued a statement for those in affected areas to evacuate, so it seemed the best way to find the zombies was to go where people weren’t. It seemed that all of Dzareara Alturania had been evacuated so they headed there first.  
When they arrived, they realized the reason for the evacuation. The Dzareara was practically crawling with zombies. They didn’t seem to notice the travelers which allowed Pierre to sneak into the horde easily. Haphazardly throwing some dirt on his face and his intentionally ragged clothes helped too. The one thing he couldn’t mask was his ‘alive’ smell. He knew that if he were smelled by one of the zombies, it would all be over. Of course, he was also sure that by now most of the zombies would have lost their senses due to decay, but he was still cautious. He began singing the chorus to “Pro Memoria”, a song about coming to terms with the inevitability of death in his mind that he heard when he accidentally time-traveled to 2020 through a cheap Kani-made teleporter.  
“Don't you forget about dying,  
Don't you forget about your friend, Death,  
Don't you forget that you will die”  
He reached out to one of the zombies with a specially-designed syringe designed to isolate the disease, and blacked out.

The next thing he remembered was a sour taste in his mouth. His right arm also hurt extremely bad. Opening his eyes, he saw Claude standing over him, beaming.  
“See, Parzhusa. I told you he’d wake up!”  
Parzhusa’s expression was flatter than usual, probably from being proven wrong.  
“Yes, yes, I see that now. I just was unsure of it working because of the complicated and, frankly, messed up internal structures of you Imaginaries. It’s almost as though you were designed by children.”  
He intentionally dragged the last sentence on for sarcastic emphasis. Claude glared at him.  
“What, I needed to, how do you say, get back at you for all the atrocious zombie puns.”  
“They are not atrocious! Besides, your ‘joke’ wasn’t even funny.”  
“Perhaps you’re just not smart enough to understand my humor, demthardanae.”  
Pierre was still very disoriented. He seemed to be laying down on the couch at his house. He glanced down at his arm causing his head to spin. His arm was covered in bandages and had various tubes full of various mystery liquids running into it.  
“You almost died out there, mon frère cadet. I’m so proud of you! I’m also pretty happy that it was you getting hurt and not me, but that’s neither here nor there.”  
“Wow, thanks for caring about me so much,” Pierre croaked; his mouth was still dry. “But what exactly happened out there? I reached out to that first zombie and then, well, here I am.”  
Parzhusa looked at Claude. Claude pointed at Parzhusa in a silent sign of “No, I don’t want to tell him. You tell him.”  
“Well,” Parzhusa started. “The reason you passed out was because one of the zombies bit you. That’s what the bandages are for. You did manage to get a sample, so at that point the prophecy stated I could intervene. Being the pinnacle of immortality that I am I was able to rescue you before the virus reached your brain. You see this?”  
He pointed to a hatch on his chest, opened it, and revealed a similar syringe to the one that Pierre had used.  
“I’m sorry to say but you were really used as bait. We didn’t actually need the pathogen from the zombies, we needed it from you. As Imaginaries are not true mortals while undead Reni technically are, your body’s adaptation to the pathogen is the only kind of sample that would be compatible with all species. That’s what some of the tubing is for, we’ve been gradually draining it out of your system. As for the zombies, they’re mostly taken care of. Our ‘gas bomb’ idea worked magnificently and now, because of you, all of Tari will be prepared in case anything like this happens again.”  
Claude looked at Parzhusa with an almost sad expression.  
“Now I wish I would’ve done it for the praise I would’ve gotten. I would’ve probably sacrificed myself entirely to the zombies if it meant I got to be praised as a martyr.”  
Parzhusa looked at Pierre’s face and saw that he was looking much better than he looked even hours before. His once ashen face had regained some of its color and his purple-green eyes looked bright and intelligent once again. Soon, he thought, my job here will be done and I can return to the great Ethanaria.  
Pierre mused, “Then I guess our time here is done. We really need to go search for our brother, he might still be around here somewhere. I know I’m not really in the best shape to go out right now, so I suppose you could go out instead.  
“I regret to inform you but I must leave this form and return to my home above. I wish you two the best of luck in finding your brother, and it’s been strangely fun.” stated Parzhusa.  
He then pulled out a pin from the base of his neck and the glow in his eyes faded out. Just before the flame of his boiler had completely died out, they heard a faint “you’re welcome” coming from the sky.  
Pierre and Claude had many misadventures together afterward. One serious mishap even forced them to change their name, so if you ever hear of the misadventures of a certain Irvin and Paxter Ellings, you know the start of their tale. 

But one thing the brothers were never prepared for was:

THE END  
(for now)

Glossary (French and my conlangs) in chronological order:

Imaginary- Imaginaries are the souls of childhood imaginary friends. If the child's attachment to them was very strong they can develop their own consciousness and even survive after their creator's death.

'Mon Dieu'- My God!

'Epinare, ipuna ithtou Dzareara Parzhusaria'- "Please, follow me to Dzareara Parzhusa."  
Each Reni god was once a mortal and once becoming a god took the name of a Dzareara (defining city). That's why Parzhusa shares the name of the city.

'Ça me soule!! Ohhh ça me soule!'- Stronger variant of 'oh crap'

'Calmez-vous, mon petit chou'- "Calm down, my little cabbage"  
(It seems weird to English-speakers but this is an actual French affectionate term.)

'Tais-toi et laisse-moi tranquille, ‘Jean’'- "Shut up and leave me alone, 'Jean'!

'Moshideshidusha! Thedzarna, demthardanae!'- Moshideshidusha is notoriously hard to translate into English. It is basically an exclamation of frustration. "Thedzarna, demthardanae" is a highly formal way of saying "shut up you absolute moron".

'Profiter de la vie plus'- Enjoy life more

'mon frère cadet'- my little brother

Ethanaria- Literally translates to magic-space. The Reni pantheon's equivalent to the afterlife or home of the gods.


End file.
